Mobile terminals using cellular networks often experience interference from various sources or due to various causes, such as interference caused by the same signal arriving at the mobile terminal at slightly different times after having propagated along different paths, i.e. so-called multipath interference. As is known, it is often possible to cancel interfering signals at a receiver, and the prior art teaches various methods of interference cancellation (IC), both at mobile terminals and at base stations. Mobile terminals often implement so-called single antenna interference cancellation (SAIC) algorithms, since physical constraints make it difficult to use more than one antenna in providing IC. A SAIC algorithm estimates and removes the effect of interference from a received signal. SAIC algorithms are divided into joint detection SAIC algorithms, which use a known training sequence for the interfering signal, and blind or semi-blind SAIC algorithms.
Using a SAIC algorithm does improve performance in the presence of interfering signals, but a general drawback of SAIC algorithms is that in the absence of strong interference, a SAIC algorithm tends to enhance noise (because of errors in estimating the interfering signal) and so tends to degrade receiver performance compared to a non-SAIC conventional receiver. Also the presence of several interfering signals or severe multipath components can degrade the performance of a SAIC receiver.
What is needed is a way to implement a SAIC algorithm in a receiver so that the SAIC algorithm is used ideally only when it would improve performance.